Part II. How Mistrust Spreads and Becomes Entrenched (Episodes 6-10)

⑥ Media: Mediators Unable to Explain Mistrust

⑦ Politics: Politics of Unchosen Words

⑧ Economy: Numbers Increased, but Trust Disappeared

⑨ Education: The Collapse of an Institution Meant to Foster Judgment

⑩ Labor: Institutions That Became Risks, Not Protections

Economic policy is inherently an area that deals with expectations. Indicators such as growth rates, prices, and employment are all figures used to explain the present, but citizens and markets ultimately ask one question.

“What will happen in the future?”

Trust in the economy is built not on current numbers, but on the predictability of the future.

Today’s economic discourse provides more information than ever before. Statistics are granular, and analyses pour in in real-time.

Despite this, trust in the economy rarely recovers.

The reason is simple: while the numbers have increased, the explanations for what judgments should be derived from those numbers have decreased.

The decisive moment when economic policy loses trust is not when indicators are poor.

Rather, it is when policymakers repeatedly use the word “temporary.”

The more explanations like “temporary” for price hikes, economic slowdowns, and exchange rate fluctuations accumulate, the more the market and citizens interpret them in the opposite way.

This is because they interpret it to mean that there is no telling when things will return to normal. At this point, economic mistrust shifts from a problem of performance to a problem of prediction.

People want to know the direction for the next quarter and the next year, more than the current growth rate.

However, if policy explanations remain merely post-hoc justifications, expectations are not managed and are left unattended. Explanations increase, but standards become ambiguous.

Recent years of repeated policy scenarios illustrate this.

During interest rate hikes, explanations like “the burden on households is not significant” were common, but the lived experience was different.

When the exchange rate surged, announcements stated “foreign currency soundness is favorable,” but the market first reflected its anxiety in prices.

With every real estate policy, the phrase “market stabilization is the goal” was repeated, but no prediction was offered about when the next policy might be overturned.

This discrepancy is not a matter of conspiracy, but of structure.

Policy emphasizes stability, but the market calculates change first.

When these two languages are out of sync, policy messages fail to act as signals, and market reactions are dismissed as overinterpretations. In the interim, trust rapidly erodes.

This is also why the more numbers there are, the greater the confusion becomes.

Numbers can explain the past, but they do not guarantee the future.

When economic policy fails to clearly present “how it will move under what conditions,” indicators become not a basis for judgment, but another subject for interpretation.

This structure alters the behavior of households and businesses.

Long-term investment decreases, and short-term responses increase. Plans are set conservatively, and risks are borne by individuals.

The more policy fails to reduce uncertainty, the more economic actors view policy itself as a new risk factor.

As mistrust deepens, governments present more numbers.

However, the increase in numbers does not compensate for a lack of explanation. Why this indicator is important, at what standards policy is adjusted, and how failures will be corrected remain ambiguous.

While complex models and jargon increase, the standards that citizens can use for decision-making actually decrease.

The phrase “the economy is psychology” is often cited, but a more accurate expression is that the economy is a matter of expectations.

In a society where expectations are not managed, mistrust becomes not an irrational emotion, but a rational choice. It is not to avoid believing, but to prepare.

Economic mistrust does not begin with a lack of performance. It begins with the failure of policy explanations that do not provide predictability.

The next episode (⑨ Education: The Collapse of an Institution Meant to Foster Judgment) will examine how mistrust has transferred across generations to the education system and why education is no longer a ladder of trust.